The neurotic has a creative thought and thinks he’s crazy. The Psychotic has a creative thought and thinks he’s sane. The artist has a creative thought and knows its reality.

My father worked with his hands. He was a machinist, a carpenter, a farmer, a repairman, an electrician, and a problem-solver. He was not a professional, an intellectual, or a specialist. He was a smart man.

When I was a kid he would insist that I just watch while he worked, despite my often-impatient protestations that I be permitted to help. Over and over again he would say, “You watch and sweep up.”

Soon after I had finished my medical and psychiatric training, I went into practice with a friend and colleague. We decided to purchase a house for an office site rather than to locate in a traditional office building. We had a large living/waiting room, a kitchen, and three private office spaces, formerly bedrooms. Outside was a large garden area. The neighbors liked the idea of having a doctor’s office in the neighborhood.

One day we decided to build a hot tub, an elegant one made out of tile. I went about drawing up a crude plan and purchasing materials, which ranged from tiles to pipe and fittings, a pool heater, a pump, and electric apparatus.

My partner acknowledged that he knew nothing about this kind of work but was eager to help. On a weekend we shed our professional attire for work clothes and began excavating, then laying a concrete base followed by the construction of tile forms for the sides of the tub. My colleague turned to me and asked, “How do you know what to do first?” I suddenly flooded with memories and feelings of gratitude. I had, in a flash–a flash that took thirty years to be ignited–understood that my father had been teaching me the order of things. The watching and cleaning up had provided a basis for knowing not only how, but also when and where and under what circumstances, something needs to be done. All that time I had thought he was just treating me like a child.

I dropped my tools and telephoned my father. I told him I might be a little late, but I wanted him to know how much gratitude I felt for his teaching. This gratitude became fuel for further progress.

A very high percentage of people who come to work with me enter with assumptions that the work consists of fitting into an outcome-expectancy that will be carried out by cognizing something. They don’t like this or that about themselves, their relationships, their environment; they are in pain, frustrated, depressed, anxious, crazy. Their relationships are falling apart, they are intimidated by their bosses, the system expects too much, they must, they should, they can’t, and on and on.

They strive to “get it,” to solve a problem, to become something different. My father taught me that there is nothing to “get.” Rather, there is a capacity, which can be learned, that knows the order of things. In any given task, if an apparently insoluble problem arose, my father wouldn’t try to figure it out, calculate, get to the end. He would say, “Just sit there” or “Sleep on it. Don’t think about it, it will come to you.”

Holding the elusive in your mental grasp is all that is necessary. Cognition is only the first stage of learning, though we have been trained to believe it is the only way. I have had enough experience to know that progress and solutions do not come in this traditionally assumed way. When we eat, we cognize the taste, the aroma, the texture, and the temperature of the food. We can be aware of chewing and swallowing. Assimilation–the essential process in which food is transformed into life–occurs completely beyond our cognition. Why, then, do we assume that our brains do not do the same thing with experience?

This is not a mere academic point. Many of our apparent solutions to the healing of the aforementioned human conditions might be exacerbated, or even caused, by the very methods we use. Cognition is a phase of learning equivalent to the aroma and taste of things. It is a necessary impact. But, just as we cannot sustain ourselves on these qualities alone, so does time and patience serve to allow our brains to assimilate experience. Why settle for the aroma of something when we can extract its nutrition?

The people I see do indeed have problems. But the problems they have are often not the ones they are trying to solve. We never seem to understand that the problems are always the same, only apparently different–that it is our methods that fail us. Cultivating patience, forbearance and openness is the only solution to “I want to ‘get it’ by two thirty tomorrow afternoon.” My father’s advice, although not from the mouth of an expert in therapeutic matters, is nevertheless counsel well taken. “Just sit there,” Sleep on it,” “Don’t think about it, it will come to you.”

Self esteem is a gas
Vanity is a liquid
Pride is a solid
Narcissism is a compound

The gas diffuses
The liquid flows
The solid holds its place
The compound sublimates
(sublimation is the process of one state moving to another without going through an intermediate state)

Water vapor
Liquid water
Ice
Ice to vapor.

All are water.
All are different
All are the same
All necessitate each other

I just spent an hour and a half deleting over 1000 spam messages from the comments section of my Blog:

Being a relative computer illiterate, I couldn’t find a way to delete them en masse, so I laboriously deleted them one at a time. Scanning the messages, I was struck by the fact that there were really only six categories of spam; these included solicitations for

• Watching, improving upon, or participating in, sex
• Erectile dysfunction drugs
• Learning about improving gambling winnings, participation in gambling or gambling locations
• Bible reading, converting to Christianity, locations for finding same
• Stimulant drugs
• Sedative drugs

The pattern became instantly clear. Each offered some kind of antidote.

On further examination of comments made about my writing, I found only four legitimate ones, made by a total of two individuals. Gresham’s Law– “Counterfeit money drives real money out of circulation”–was operating in the field of my writing.

How the spammers were attracted to my Blog is a mystery. I can speculate that all they needed were a few key words such as: greed, advantage, gain, or adult behavior. This might have constituted the bait that trapped their attention. However, as the adage goes, “No worm was ever placed on a hook to benefit the belly of a fish.”

All of this has not been without value. It has prompted me to write this reflection and also to make a solicitation of my own. I would appreciate any advice that would connect these spammers directly with each other. In this way I can eliminate the middleman. Everyone will benefit. They will receive antidotes for their obsessions and I will be left alone. Have I received the comments I deserve?

While working at the prison, I overheard a conversation between conmen. These particular worthies of that world were agreeing that the sucker (mark/victim) must possess larceny. They bemoaned the fact that you can’t take an honest person. I listened with fascination as they talked of cons gone bust because an honest person, when presented with a dazzling find of money out of the blue, would naively say, “Maybe we should take it to the police.” A true victim would look for a quick and easy gain or advantage.

It is generally thought that they are called conmen because they exude confidence. This is only partially correct. They actually are called conmen because they give confidence to their victims, and being confident in themselves is one way of achieving that. They understand that a person’s greed can be exploited by means of reassurance.

Like true professionals, they have their own terminology. They spoke of the sucker complex–a state of mind in which one is particularly vigilant about being taken for a sucker. It seems that, when the symptoms manifest, i.e., suspicion, uncertainty, doubt, testing, mistrust, in relationship to the conman, they are most vulnerable to being conned. Why? Because, unwittingly, they want to have their greedy wishes fulfilled while simultaneously needing reassurance that they will not lose. They are unaware that greed drives their wishful thinking, which drives the desire to minimize loss, which drives more greed. Greed is the operant factor. The conman simply obliges the victim’s desire for reassurance.

All concurred that the easiest marks were the ones with sucker complexes. They agreed that learning to diagnose the sucker complex could take years of experience and require guidance from someone who had mastered its operation in all of its manifestations. The latter knows that the ultimate con is when the sucker believes that he/she hasn’t been taken at all.

Every day, in their inner worlds, people’s wishful thinking and greed cause greater loss of human potential than any from the con game. Money is the most obvious, but only a small part of the infinite forms greed might take. In fact, whole belief systems can be explained solely on the basis of greed and a need for reassurance. For example, people often think they understand when they have only given themselves a reassuring explanation. This explanation is, of course, a substitute for understanding. In the con game, the mark is shocked to find newspaper cut to the shape of dollar bills after tearing open the promising envelope. The conman, of course, has already moved on to the next sucker. No conman is necessary, however, for the inner variation.

My proxy meets with your proxy to arrange a meeting. They decide on an agenda to rehash history, undo the sins of the past, and arrange for future changes based on outcome expectancies.

While this is going on, we are meeting secretly. We experience each other coming into being, not as onlookers but as participants; Not with assumptions, preconceptions or fixed ideas to be validated or denied; but developments that cannot be categorized, analyzed, or quantified; Not bodies external to each other that cannot occupy the same space in the same time; not bodies that ‘cause’ each other; but bodies self-generated from within, existing outside of time, not subject to quantification or causes; qualities that necessitate each other: water and wetness not billiard ball and cue stick.

While the proxies are in the railroad stations we are on the train. While they are trying to count the ties we are immersed in the landscape. They are exhabitants. We are inhabitants. They find unity in the multiplicity. We find multiplicity in the unity. They belong TOGETHER. We BELONG together. They are a photograph. We are a hologram. Tear the photo and get two pieces of the one picture. Break the hologram and every piece reproduces the whole picture.

I am within prison confines for the purposes of gathering evidence, the location of which I am quite familiar. The prison has stone walled information that is absolutely necessary for my exoneration in the world outside. I am in peril because I have gained entrance without an identification badge, previously confiscated. Having obtained the information I must somehow find a way to get past the guard at the gait whose job it is solely to check ID.

I am in a state of fear and hope. Fear that someone who knows me by my appearance alone will turn me in; hope that others, who know my innocence, will help me get by the guard at the gate.

Although, in general the inmates can not be trusted to help, there are those whose humanity I have touched and even if condemned for life would sacrifice to help me get out. I feel that I cannot involve them at risk of bringing more suffering to their lives. I see a woman, attractive, from whom I think of asking for help. She feels no malice or mistrust for me. I choose not to ask either in fear that she knows only my outwardness, or that she will be in jeopardy.

I am aware that it is a felony for me to be inside the prison without official ID. I think I could charm the guards who have known me for so long. Yet I am aware that duty will take precedent over allowing me to pass. I know they always ask for ID even if it is their spouses who work here. They know they are always observed for dereliction by others and will not risk the peril of passing me through.

I must find food and rest, avoid being discovered, be thoughtful of those who know my presence and whom I trust not to reveal my presence. I am dependent upon them yet am afraid to involve them both for their sake and my own selfish fear of betrayal.

My presence alone makes me guilty of a felony - being in prison without authorization. Yet, I am here in order to gain protection from accusation of crimes of which I am innocent on the outside. I must wait patiently for the means of release to come to me. There are no guarantees that it will.

Forging an Identity badge? Disguise? Recruiting those who know me? Distracting the guards? Drugging the guards? Getting a message to the outside? Abandoning hope and fear? Not try to avoid my fate?
Attempt a break-out risking my life for the sake of reaching the outside? If caught, I am returned to prison. If I die, no further identity badge would be necessary

Turning myself in and going to trial, I could use the evidence I have collected (evidence of my innocence of ‘crimes’ for which I have not been indicted) to justify my unlawful presence in prison. I could then use the same evidence to defend accusations of crimes for which the evidence was originally intended if indicted.

I have no memory of how I eluded the guards to gain entrance. I made no provision for escape before entering. I neither informed nor consulted anybody on the outside, brought no communication device, no food. Is heedlessness my prison?

I commit myself to cultivate patience, openness and forbearance; to surrender to the possibility that a solution will find me not that I will find it; or face that there is no solution at all. I will go on living in the prison while not being of it. If I should be discovered, I will accept my fate. I will have changed while staying the same.

I am in Sydney. I ask my host where the nearest coffee house is. He rattles off a few then recommends the trendy place, where those who want to see and be seen go. He adds, ‘if you don’t mind sitting on orange crates.’ I go. The barista assumes I’m a little old Italian man - I am of East European Jewish extraction. He speaks Italian to me addressing me as signore. Flattered I answer in Italian. He gives me an espresso. Assuming all little old Italian men are aficianodos , he asks whether the coffee is right. I answer, ‘perfeto.’ Moving to my orange crate, I notice a woman, legs beautifully crossed, arched high by her orange crate. My heart sinks. I realize she assumes I’m a little old Italian man confirmed by the interaction moments before. I snap to the awareness that I am no longer the swarthy, dark-eyed, youthful man I assumed myself to be when the barista spoke Italian to me. Looking at her, I assume the best that can happen is that she will patronize me and call me “sir” too. The worst, of course is that I don’t exist to her at all! My effort to see and be seen winds up in a swirl of regret. If only I had answered in English. I know (assume!) I could be having a passionate relationship with her right now. Perhaps some other term should be found to describe what seeing is.

We ran out of fabric softener the other day and I went to the supermarket to buy it. My wife informed me that I’d have to go the Safeway for a particular brand that had no added scent. I had never been to the Safeway. After cruising the isles I came upon what I was looking for and it was priced at $5.99.

When I came to the cashier she rang it up and the register read, $7.99. “It was marked $5.99,” I said, The cashier asked, “Do you have a Safeway membership card?’” No I responded. ‘That will be $7.99,” she said. I repeated that the price was marked $5.99 and she, undaunted, asked me if I had a Safeway card. I said, “No,” now with some irritability.

On the third go around a kindly woman standing behind me in line translated for me. She explained that the cashier wasn’t asking me for a card I did not have, rather she was asking if I wanted one and if I had one the item would cost me $5.99. I asked for a card and I paid $5.99.

This transaction led me to reflect on the many times I can become irritable,
argumentative, oppositional, righteous, insulted, all on the basis of a lack of
context or even a minute bit of information. I was reminded of the many
times my left-handed wife and I - I’m right-handed – have gotten into
a row over orientation. She often will describe something as on the left
when it is ‘clearly’ on the right to me. This is where I never seem to register
my lack of information. I say right, she says left and the fight is on. What
information do I lack? “We’re different.”

We have been married for forty-one years and she is still functioning quite well in the world. In the moment I fail to register our difference I perseverate much in the way that I did with the Safeway lady. Unfortunately, there is rarely someone standing in line to translate for me. But all is not lost. I have learned that the moment I experience the irritability I can use the awareness to know that I am lacking something. To know the lack is to be able to ask for translation. To perseverate in my irritability is to not recognize the obvious. When I do this, I unfortunately get what I deserve: No membership card and a price of $7.99.

A person lost in a fog might perceive himself as lost and needing to find his way out. If, however, that fog is keeping him hidden from a pack of wolves, he is much better off in the fog.

Muddling is a form of camouflage. It allows the muddler to avoid culpability for any given thought or action by diverting attention from one thing to another: by allowing for “exits;” by blending any foreground into the background so that it cannot be perceived; or by creating voids into which the other can project his or her own needs, wishes or disowned characteristics.

The muddler is a human Rorschach.

The muddler, because hidden, is capable of “ambush” while maintaining ‘plausible deniability.’

Muddling is akin to the scatter technique used in hypnosis. Because attention is rapidly and repetitively shifted the other is made more suggestible or susceptible to the muddler’s real message.

Muddling is a means of mobilizing the environment to make choices for one while remaining hidden. The muddler simply continues until the other chooses what the muddler wants. The other tends to believe he is making the choice.

Muddlers are firmly decided not to decide. They don’t know this and believe they are indecisive.